Most humans, after encountering alien civilizations, chose to learn how to forget. It was the only way they could preserve a shred of dignity in the face of an infinite universe.

But he was different.

Chan Ji-Hin never chose to forget.

He remembered the tragic misfire when the interstellar translator could still only interpret seventeen layers of semantic meaning. He remembered the five seconds of screaming before the collapse of the synthetic consciousness at the Phobos monitoring station.

He was the kind of person who didn't just understand information—he absorbed it, dismantled it, and examined the structure of its soul.

That morning, he was “waking” inside a low-pressure sleep pod in Zone 3-Alpha of the Earth-Moon Transit Port.

His true consciousness remained asleep in a brainwave chamber deep within Earth's gravity well. But this artificial body opened its golden eyes in silence.

A system voice, deep and neutral, echoed:

“Detective identity confirmed. Welcome back, Chan Ji-Hin. You have a new assignment from registration code ZC-991.”

ZC-991. He recognized that designation.

It belonged to an alien resident on Earth, a member of the Nora species from the Ionian system—biologically compatible with humans, yet evolved with a dual neural network.

They rarely issued requests—unless it was something that shouldn’t be officially recorded.

He sat up. A black-gray cloak, woven from memory fabric, automatically unfurled from the wall of the pod and draped over his shoulders.

Its texture mimicked the cashmere of Old Earth circa 2040, but embedded within it was a sensory mesh that adapted its color to surrounding fields—like a highly intelligent mimic creature.

Ji-Hin walked into the “Gray Hall” of the transit port—a windowless meeting chamber designed to feel absolutely neutral to visitors from worlds with differing gravitational norms.

Then he saw her.

A Nora woman, with skin shimmering in subtle silver-green hues and a voice that moved like mist. She introduced herself as Eilan.

Her pupils weren’t round—they were a hexagonal mesh, pulsing with a low-frequency rhythm from her homeworld.

She spoke, her tone emotionless:

“This is an independent commission, unregistered with the Union. We’ll pay you double. Your task is to go beyond Pluto’s orbit, to a derelict research fragment—and retrieve a sound that no longer exists.”

Ji-Hin didn’t respond. He simply walked closer, watching the faint pulses in her neural filaments as she spoke.

“A sound may vanish,” he said, “but its resonance will speak.”

Eilan blinked, then nodded.

“We chose you not because you can hear—but because you can translate.”

This wasn’t his first commission.

He had taken jobs from planetary officials trying to erase the past, from AI souls seeking to prove their innocence, even from a poet born on the edge of a black hole.

But this was the first time he was approached by the Nora.

He looked up at the virtual skylight—where the far side of the Moon hovered in projection—then spoke calmly:

“I’ll take the job. But I want something in return: the lost Memory Recorder—the only machine capable of storing non-human emotion.”

Eilan glanced at him, and—for the first time—her tone wavered.

“You want to trace that memory?”

“No,” he said. “I want to set it free.”

Sigrid

@Mickeysn168

Canada

Sigrid has not written a story.